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Leonard Named Associate Head for Research at Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

Professor John Leonard

Thu, 09/19/2013

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Professor John Leonard has been named the associate head for research of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, effective as of Monday, September 16, 2013.

Leonard is a professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering and a principal investigator at CSAIL, where he leads the Marine Robotics Group. His research addresses the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile operating in underwater and terrestrial environments. A primary goal of his group’s work is persistent autonomy or the capability for one or more robots to operate robustly for days, weeks and months at a time with minimal human supervision, in complex, dynamic environments.

Leonard received his B.S.E.E. in Electrical Engineering and Science from the University of Pennsylvania and D.Phil. in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford. He joined the MIT faculty in 1996 after five years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Research Scientist in the MIT Sea Grant Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Laboratory.

He is the recipient of an NSF Career Award, an E.T.S. Walton Visitor Award from Science Foundation Ireland, and the King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Transactions on Robotics Paper Award.